In honor of this experiment reaching 400 laughs at Club-MST3k, I think this movie deserves an unriffed viewing. 400 laughs makes it the most laughed episode at the club, far and away the most laughed. I think I would place the episode in my top 50, but probably not my top 25.

Reb (David Ryder) Brown and Cissy (Dr. Lea Jansen) Cameron have been married since 1979.

The credits remind me of the visual from the FVI films the SOL watched, but these are on purpose.

I don’t understand why this movie is ‘introducing’ Cissy Cameron, she has IMDB credits going back to 1971. She was a regular in a Ted Knight sitcom, back when that meant something. How can you introduce someone with 17 years of work behind her?

Battlestar Galactica of 1978 and 1980. I saw both series, I saw the movie in the theaters. But I can’t say I was a big fan of it. I much preferred Buck Rogers for my late 1970’s Sci-Fi. Had no interest in the more recent series.

I don’t know much about South African cinema in the late 1980’s, but this looks more like a ‘fan film’ than a professional job. A high quality fan film, but it doesn’t even reach TV movie quality in look.

If these were amateurs, I would praise the creativity of setting up the locations. An office as the bridge? Generic Industrial building (with windows) as the bowels of the ship? There had to be better choices, right?

Workout leotards and modified fast food uniforms it what the clothes look like. Ed Wood would be proud.

The SOL cut out a huge chunk of Battlestar Galactica footage, and related ‘looking very concerned about the battle’ shots of the crew.

Kalgan is not a very subtle villain. I would think there would be some kind of uproar about all the people going missing.

Of the hundreds and hundreds of plot holes and questions raised, and God knows every frame of this film raises new questions, this is the series which really bugs me: Where was the Professor coming from? Was he and Ryder just out cruising through space? Were they investigating a possible planet to colonize? And they clearly know there are habitable planets out there, the Bellarians had to come from somewhere, right? You get started on these, and it just opens up dozens more. And these are the questions the first 10 minutes inspire!

John Phillip Law is really acting hard. You can just tell.

The Corona Borealis is an actual constellation, also known as the Northern Crown. So the Southern Sun is flying to the Northern Crown. Maybe that’s symbolism of some sort.

And they are not even consistent about how they use the Battlestar footage. In the first scenes, it was moving backwards. Now it is moving forward.

I know Kalgan is the ‘villain’ of the piece, but is he really? He wants to get everyone off the ship and on to a planet. I can’t say I approve of his methods, but Commander Jansen (Cameron Mitchell) might be wrong on this on.

Many of the kills in this movie are based on the fact no one seems to react to shots fired and bodies dropping to the floor.

And isn’t his a fight to the death kind of thing for the mutineers? I mean where can they go after rising up against the Commander? They are still just stuck on a space, you know what, no more questions.

The SOL cut the Engineer flailing around the floor on fire. He burns up real good in the full cut.

I don’t think they missed a cliché in this movie. It is like they had a checklist.

Watchability: 3 of 5. I’ve changed my mind a dozen times on this already. What blows my mind is how much the SOL crew didn’t go after in this movie. When I say this movie makes me think of Ed Wood, that is a good thing.

Missing the Riffs: 3 of 5. It is one of those movies that doesn’t need the SOL to be enjoyable. Of course, your mileage may vary.

“The police don’t believe in monsters. Facts are our business. Facts and only facts… and don’t you forget it.”

If my math is correct, this movie represents the end of the first quarter of movies. I know 50 is a cleaner number to celebrate, but that’s just because people like numbers that end in zero for some reason. Percentages work much better for me, even if celebrating #47 seems a bit odd.

And it seems appropriate to mark the quarter turn with a movie by the man who is/was the gateway into bad movie love for so many people: Ed Wood.

I always liked the fact that MST3K stayed away from Plan 9, it had such a reputation as ‘the worst film ever’ I think it would have been seen as too easy for the SOL crew. They couldn’t stay away from Ed, not if you wanted any credibility for showing the worst of the worst, and was able to show a wider range of work to the world. The 3 Wood films and the two quasi-Wood films (The Unearthly and Racket Girls) featured on MST3K might not be much better than Plan 9, but they do show quite the range of styles Ed Wood played with.

Bride of the Monster has a special place in my heart, it was my first Ed Wood film. I had been falling in love with B-Movies thanks to the Early Show and Late Late Show on the local channels. I had been finding out about the B’s through magazines and kept seeing Wood’s name pop up, usually in reference to Plan 9. There was a video store on the University Campus that supposedly had ‘weird’ movies. One day I biked to that store, only to find Plan 9 had been checked out. The clerk recommended Bride of the Monster as a replacement, trying to help a kid I suppose. I probably watched it a half a dozen times in the short time I had that tape. I had gone from liking giant bug movies to loving the bizarre. My whole attitude about movies and what I defined as ‘entertaining’ had been turned on its head.

Yes, there were those poseurs in high school who thought the height of cinema was Bergman and Truffaut. And they wasted time watching movies they couldn’t comprehend so they could lie to the world about their ‘understanding’ of the movie. Ed Wood didn’t make you feel stupid.

And it wasn’t that Ed Wood made me feel superior either. It, as strange as the comparison may sound, is like the affinity I have for Charlie Brown. You do your best, you put your heart into it, and most of the time, you end up with Bride of the Monster, not Citizen Kane. Nothing wrong with that, as long as that really is the best you can do.

Now, 30 or so years after that first binge watching of Bride, I’m at the point where I don’t think Ed Wood would even rank in the bottom 5 of MST3K directors. But I don’t know if there is a B/Cult movie director whose stuff I love more and watch more than his. And Bride of the Monster is my most loved movie by him.

Several years ago, that University Campus video store was having a sale. Giving in to the times and going exclusively to DVDs. That’s where I purchased my copy of Bride. The same VHS tape I checked out all those years before. I have a connection, a history, with this movie.

Watchability: 5 of 5. This isn’t fandom; It is love.

Missing the Riffs: 5 of 5. I watch it often unriffed. Like I said, it has a special place in my heart.

Wrestling and workout footage. There is even more than the SOL showed. The amount of wrestling in this movie puts Samson/Santo to shame.

George Weiss really loved his Peaches. Why, he doesn’t even get to our gangster storyline until we’re about 1/3 into the film. Maybe the extend workout/wrestling sequences are there because there wasn’t enough story to make a movie. More likely, the story is there to keep this from becoming soft-core porn.

The ‘catfight’ last a surprisingly short 5 minutes.

It would seem wrestling with two long Pippi Longstocking braids would not be a smart thing to do. Clara Mortensen/Rita Martinez championship bout goes close to 10 minutes.

This isn’t night for night, it’s blackout for night.

And like that it is over.

Watchability: 3 of 5. Very hard to place. Way way too much wrestling and unattractive women, but there is this wonderful Ed Wood style sleaze about it. Yeah, I’m going to watch again.

Missing the Riffs: 2 of 5. I do love the riffing on this episode. It is another movie where there is so little dialogue some good riffs are needed to fill the spaces. The wide wide open space.

Note: I’m watching the version without the 19 second nude scene. The full version (if you really need to see the boobies for ‘integrity’) is available at archive.org. The edited version is usually the one in the budget bins/collections.

The ‘making of’ this movie is a fascinating story. This interview http://www.bmonster.com/profile37.html with Producer/Actor Anthony Cardoza (in addition to the 3 Francis films, he produced/acted in The Hellcats.) does a better job than I ever could. Be aware, the Coleman Francis story didn’t have a happy ending.

It’s all Tor Johnson’s fault.

I was an Ed Wood fan. Bride of the Monster, Glen or Glenda, Plan 9 From Outer Space. Loved them, as well as the B-movies (that’s what I thought all pre-1970 scifi/horror was) on the Early Show and Late Late Show. But I was at the video store in 1984, probably That’s Rentertainment, when I saw the VHS. Tor Johnson in a non-Ed Wood movie? The idea blew my mind.

I thought I knew what a b-movies were. Thought I had seen low budget films. Thought I knew how to define ‘cult’ movie. The Beast of Yucca Flats changed everything. Now I was lucky to live in a university town with a great rental story. There was a whole new wall of choices for me. Midget Westerns! Jungle Capers! Well Oiled Hercules! Rubber Monsters! The Cor-Man! The Ro-Man! Heck, they even had a 1970 movie called Bigfoot, staring John Caradine and produced by Antony Cardoza! (or maybe I have my Bigfoot movies mixed up)

But nothing else by Coleman Francis. His name never showing up in the Monster Movie mags and Zines of my day. The Beast was always ‘that Tor Johnson’ movie. Hell, I probably couldn’t tell you who directed the movie. I just assumed this was his one shot and, it didn’t go too well. After all, who would let him make another movie?

But I was wrong, it wasn’t Tor Johnson’s film. It wasn’t Tor Johnson that changed everything for me. It was Coleman Francis. I just didn’t know it yet.

Almost a decade later I finally found out.

Watchabilty: 1 of 5. It is in the discussion for worst movie ever. Definitely in Monster A-Go Go, The Creeping Terror range. Never trust a movie that’s narrated (except Blade Runner). A big movie in terms of my development as a fan.

Missing the Riffs: 3 of 5. I like both versions, don’t make me choose.

I admit, I’m very biased towards this movie. I just love the 60’s dancing styles. Decent jazzy/surf rock underlying soundtrack. And unlike so many movies on MST3K, the pretty girls are actually pretty.

Jerry Warren is one of those underappreciated ‘anti-geniuses’ of BLC movies. Check out 1959’s Teenage Zombie, out in the public domain, and his ‘remake’ of it in 1981 called Frankenstein Island. Knowing he has made two movies worse than this one is amazing. He had no money and loved to use movie and stock footage in all his films. It is like he purposely tried to follow the style of Ed Wood and failed. He did have one ‘decent’ movie in him with The Incredible Petrified World, but I think more and more that was a mistake on his part.

Steve Brodie. The man worked a helluva lot. TV, movies. Like John Caradine, just cut the man a check and he’ll show up. Look up the IMBD pages for Batwoman (Katherine Victor) and Heathcliffe (Lloyd Nelson), impressive credits, not as actors, behind the scenes people. There were people who knew how a movie was made, unfortunately, the director wasn’t one of them.

The movie is barely an hour long, and there are all these dance sequences. Keeps us away from the dialogue.

Couldn’t even afford dials!

Rat Pfinks everywhere in the early 60’s.

A shot of Batwoman throwing her hands up in exasperation to end the movie was cut by the SOL crew. I’m right with you lady.

Watchability. 3 of 5. Actually a fun little movie. Great dancing, cute girls, absurd parody. I rewatched it twice in 12 hours that should say something.

Missing the Riffs: 3 of 5. There are going to be times I want to watch it on its own, and times I’ll want the SOL.

You know how you felt a little sick when you found out what really happened to Rita in Sidehackers? The real start of The Unearthly is like that. A light turns on in a matte painting and there’s Tor Johnson, strangling some blonde. That must have stuck with Coleman Francis, with the implication of Javorsky killing the shower woman at the start of Beast of Yucca Flats. I have a feeling I’m in for more than a few shocks like that during this project.

This is sort of my back door way of mentioning the man responsible for my love of the B’s–Mr. Edward D Wood Jr—without actually watching one of his films (saving those few for later). I’ve maintained for decades that Ed Wood actually had a decent idea or two, but the insistence of only his vision undermined everything. Really, if you strip down Plan 9, you have the frame work for an X-Files story, not one of the worst movies ever.

And this a movie that provides evidence to my argument. The Unearthly is based on characters created by Ed Wood. In the hands of writer John D. F. Black (who Star Trek fans should know) and others with more talent than Wood’s circle (John Carradine, the 50 foot woman, Miss America 1946 and Playmate of the Month for February 1957!), suddenly you have the makings of a passable thriller/mystery/sci-fi/horror movie. If you kick Tor Johnson out of there and I doubt you have any reason to put this on MST3K. Tor Johnson, sticking out like a sore thumb is the only “Ed Wood” thing in this movie. Thank you Ed Wood for being so stubborn, without that, your movies would all be like The Unearthly.

With around 250 films, it is a little shocking we don’t see more of Carradine on MST3K. I would nominate Billy the Kid vs. Dracula, The Incredible Petrified World or Hillbillys in a Haunted House with Ferlin Husky as missed rifftunaties.

I wonder if Mark Houston is related to Saul Houston.

I guess the SOL crew decided the lesson on glands and the endocrine system wasn’t funny. So many plot points cut for time: Lobo is a failed experiment of the Doctor, Lenny Bruce doesn’t want to eat and Natalie ate drugged pudding or something.

Allison Hayes, the brunette depressive, has 3 MST3K movies under her belt, this one, Gunslinger and The Crawling Hand.

Watchablity: 2 of 5

I like to do theme nights with movies. This works for Carradine, Tor Johnson, Ed Wood and Ms. Hayes. But I don’t think I would do it as a stand-alone again. Was a little off put by the murder at the start, just because as many times as I’ve seen the episode, that was much unexpected.

Missing the Riffs: 4 of 5

This is a personal favorite episodes, a key part of any “Lobo” night I want to have. There were points that I was recalling favorite riffs, but for the most part I didn’t notice they were gone. I was pleasantly surprised by that occurrence.